Embodiments herein generally relate to the use of constantly present computer applications, such as widgets and gadgets, and more particularly to a constantly present application running on a computing device such as a personal computer or a cell phone that provides two-way communication and is customized for each particular user based on user feedback and user interaction with the application.
Enterprise Marketing has emerged as a major service and provides services to help companies (normally very large companies) run marketing campaigns. Enterprise Marketing applications such as Direct Marketing, Marketing Collaterals, and Promotional Transaction generally have the same main goals. The first is to let customers and potential customers (known as prospects) know what services a company (called the purveyor) has available to use or what products the purveyor has available to purchase (and what value these products or services bring). A second goal is to gather information about the prospects to improve the next marketing campaign and to improve the purveyor's products or services. Another goal is to advertise a purveyor's brand. In other words, these different marketing applications are different methods of communicating with a prospect.
The success of a marketing campaign is often measured in return on investment, conversion rates (how many prospects actually purchased or licensed the advertised product or service), and how much information was gathered. However, the high cost of marketing campaigns reduces the purveyor's return on investment. Very often purveyors know very little about their customers even after a campaign and must still guess what a customer wants. This keeps the return low, further reducing the return on investment. Furthermore, sometimes purveyors cannot make a connection between a campaign and a sale, so they cannot evaluate the success of a campaign and therefore cannot evaluate the return on investment.
The embodiments herein provide new methods and systems of delivering marketing information to prospects and gathering information about what those prospects want and the success of a campaign. In other words the embodiments herein: decrease costs and more accurately show connections between a campaign and sales; are used to increase the amount and accuracy of the data gathered; and encourage permanent conversations between the purveyor and the prospect by allowing the prospect to choose and describe what they want to see.
The embodiments herein describe a marketing application based on Widgets. Widgets are configurable software programs that display data feeds. Familiar Widgets display current weather in a zip code or current stock market prices, or current news stories. But many other kinds of widgets are available. (Widgets are sometimes also known as Gadgets). Some widgets in the embodiments herein display a marketing information data feed. It is highly configurable so that it can act as a platform for creating marketing messages and initiating and maintaining marketing conversations with customers for any industry.
From the prospect's point of view, one advantage of the embodiments herein is that the prospect no longer receives advertisements or marketing materials that they do not want. The advertisements are delivered to prospects by one of several electronic methods and are displayed in a variety of ways (optionally chosen by the prospect). The prospect can place the Widget they have received on their desktop, cell phone, or internet home page (such as Facebook or iGoogle, available respectively from Facebook, Inc. Palo Alto, Calif., USA and Google Corp., Mountain View Calif., USA). The embodiments herein deliver marketing messages through a data feed and provide a method for the prospect to adjust the marketing message they receive. Thus, the embodiments herein tell the purveyor what the prospect is really interested in. Further, the embodiments herein gather data and gain insights directly from prospects rather than from inferences derived from data analysis. Also, the embodiments herein provide incentives for the prospect to continue the conversation with the purveyor.
Rich desktop applications (RDAs) are widget and gadget type applications that can be provided by marketers (purveyors) and downloaded by users, who then run the RDAs on their desktops. One benefit of RDAs to both the end user and the marketer is that they support active, two-way communication but do not require a constant Internet connection to run the application. The Internet connection is only used for updating content or linking back to the marketer.
For the development of RDAs a number of platforms are available including Adobe AIR (available from Adobe Corp., San Jose Calif., USA) Google Gears (available from Google Corp., Mountain View Calif., USA). Microsoft Corp. (Redmond, Wash., USA) has also entered the market with Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and a Java platform is also available from Sun Microsystems (Santa Clara, Calif. USA).
One exemplary method embodiment herein displays a rich desktop application (such as a two-way widget or gadget, which is sometimes referred to herein as a “display item”) on a graphic user interface of a customer computerized device. The customer computerized device receives a first data feed from at least one third-party computerized device by way of a computerized network connected to the customer computerized device. This first data feed is displayed through the display item.
The graphic user interface receives customer interaction information when the customer interacts with the display item. The method transmits such customer interaction information to the third-party computerized device by way of the customer computerized network. The method can additionally monitor the usage of a plurality of display items on many different computerized devices operated by many different users to gather group usage statistics relating to the display items.
Based on the embodiments herein, the customer computerized device then receives a second data feed from the third-party computerized device by way of the computerized network. The second data feed is different than the first data feed and the second data feed is customized for the customer based on the customer interaction information and/or the group usage statistics. Therefore, the embodiments herein provide each user a customized data feed for their desktop widget or gadget that is based on the user's usage of the widget or gadget (or other similar individuals' usage of the widget or gadget).
While the foregoing embodiments can be utilized to provide any form of information to a user, one particular embodiment herein provides marketing information from a purveyor to a potential customer that is customized according to the input received from the customer. More specifically, these embodiments begin by installing a platform independent application within memory of the customer computerized device. The platform independent application executes instructions through a processor of the customer computerized device to cause the graphic user interface to display the marketing display item. The platform independent application can be distributed, by the customer and/or the purveyor, to a plurality of customer computerized devices operated by a plurality of customers through web pages, e-mail, instant messaging, text messaging, social networks, etc.
These embodiments display an instance of a marketing display item (widget or gadget) on a graphic user interface of the customer's computerized device. In these embodiments, the marketing display item comprises marketing information, links to resources, links to other applications, etc. The instance of the marketing display item is based on one of a plurality of pre-established, configurable templates. The embodiments herein establish many parent marketing display items using one or more of the templates. One parent marketing display item is created for each different marketing campaign.
The customer computerized device again receives a first data feed from at least one purveyor computerized device by way of a computerized network connected to the customer computerized device. The first data feed is again displayed through the marketing display item.
Similarly, the graphic user interface receives customer interaction information when the customer interacts with the marketing display item. These embodiments transmit the customer interaction information to the purveyor computerized device by way of the customer computerized network.
Then, the customer computerized device receives a second data feed from the purveyor computerized device (by way of the computerized network). The second data feed is again different than the first data feed, and the second data feed is based on the customer interaction information.
Thus, again the embodiments herein provide each user a customized data feed for their desktop widget or gadget that is based on the user's usage of the widget or gadget (or other similar individuals' usage of the widget or gadget). Further, the embodiments herein monitor the development of the parent marketing display item to calculate return on investment values for each of the marketing campaigns.
These and other features are described in, or are apparent from, the following detailed description.